Labour’s Shadow Chancellor has taken a swipe at Jeff Bezos today as the Amazon Billionaire pays less in tax than high street businesses.
On the third day of Labour’s annual party conference in Brighton, she told the entrepreneur to pay taxes on earth before flying off to space.
“If you can afford to fly to the moon you can afford to pay your taxes on Planet Earth”
This isn’t the first time that UK politicians have tried to get Amazon to pay their taxes. In a Twitter post after his first voyage into space, Angela Rayner commented that Jeff should pay his fair share of taxes in the UK too.
Congrats to Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson on their space flights.
I think that Jeff Bezos's Amazon should pay its fair share of taxes in the UK.
I think that Richard Branson should pay his taxes in the UK and stop trying to privatise (and then sue) our NHS to make more money.
— Angela Rayner (@AngelaRayner) July 20, 2021
Last year Amazon paid just £293 million in tax to UK coffers.
The main issue that most people find is that this tax is disproportionate to Amazon’s impact on UK markets and its consumers.
According to the US reports the UK provided an £8.6bn income out of the £139bn net income from worldwide sales that the company made. These are routed through Amazon EU Sarl, located in Luxembourg to avoid the high corporation tax that most EU countries levy.
By making the remarks, Ms Reeves called on the government to increase digital services tax to 12% which would ensure online companies such as Amazon pay their fair share of taxes. This move would also allow business rates to be frozen, which would give small and medium-sized businesses a discount next year.
She said: “Today we are calling on the Government to freeze business rates next year to increase the threshold for small business rates relief, giving small and medium-sized businesses in all sectors a discount next year.
“To pay for those measures, the Government should increase the digital services tax to 12% for the next year, to make sure online companies that have thrived during this pandemic are paying their fair share.”
